The Crisis of Post-Colonial Intellectual Thought and Knowledge Production: Examining Jared Angira’s African Revolutionary Egalitarianism

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Date
2021-03-29
Authors
Wachira, Joyce Wanjiku
Goro, Nicholas Kamau
Mutie, Stephen Muthoka
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Royallite Global
Abstract
This paper critiques Jared Angira’s poetry, and the ideology it manifests with a view to interrogating the “Marxist” label scholars attach to him. Although justifications abound for the prevailing perspectives on Angira’s ideology as “Marxist”, they are limited in their subconscious reinforcement of the traditional white-supremacist image-branding of Africa in terms of deficiency and inferiority. In further contributing to the decolonisation of knowledge generation and consumption in the Global South, the paper interprets these views as theoretically misleading and ideologically incorrect. It adopts the contrary position that Angira is an African Revolutionary Egalitarian, thus paving way for the appreciation of his uniquely African contribution to endogenous knowledge production and the intellectual armoury of African political ideas. Though African Revolutionary Egalitarianism, a term we coin to try and apprehend the ideology we read in Angira’s poetry, has Marxist inclinations, in contexture, it is not Marxism. Angira’s poems are the primary data. Besides critical evaluations on the primary texts, knowledge situated around the general context of contemporary African ideological paradigms and knowledge systems constitutes secondary data. Knowledge on the broad range of historical factors, experiences and contours which shape Angira’s worldview, personality and writing also constitute an essential category of secondary data.
Description
A Research article in the Hybrid Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies
Keywords
African revolutionary egalitarianism, Global south, Marxism,, Endogenous knowledge, Authorial ideology
Citation
Wachira, J. W., Goro, N. K., & Mutie, S. M. (2021). The crisis of post-colonial intellectual thought and knowledge production: Examining Jared Angira’s African revolutionary egalitarianism. Hybrid Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies, 3(1). Retrieved from https://royalliteglobal.com/hybrid-literary/article/view/526